Review: Sonny Boy by Al Pacino

This memoir achieves what many other celebrity autobiographies fail to do by actually taking the reader into the life of the Hollywood star

Al Pacino has turned intensity into an art form. The range of characters he has inhabited in his films is astonishing. In Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather trilogy, Michael Corleone, introduced to the viewer as a decorated Marine and the son of the Corleone crime family, initially stays away from his family’s business. As time passes, he transforms into a shrewd and ruthless mafia boss, who ultimately becomes a tragic figure and dies alone.

Al Pacino as Michael Corleone on a postage stamp (Shutterstock)

In Michael Mann’s Heat, he plays Vincent Hanna, an intelligent, volatile and monomaniacal LAPD Robbery Homicide detective whose dedication to work affects his personal life. In fact, cinephiles discuss many other Pacino performances with equal admiration, among them his portrayals of the Cuban refugee who becomes a drug lord in Brian De Palma’s Scarface and his Academy Award–winning turn as the blind, acrimonious retired colonel in Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman. The characters are diverse, and his performance as each one of them is authoritative.

384pp, Rs803; Century

Sonny Boy, written by Pacino with Dave Itzkoff, is the story of an actor who is up there with the best in Hollywood’s history. It is an intimate memoir, which reveals him as a person who is uneasy under the spotlight that has followed him relentlessly since he burst onto the scene with his nuanced performances in the early Seventies. What is truly refreshing — or disappointing, depending on who is reading the book — is that the memoir does not celebrate his long-lasting stardom. Instead, it takes us deep into the life of a human being who has experienced ups and downs in his life with language that is conversational and accessible.

A boy from the South Bronx, Pacino was born to Sicilian-American parents and was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents after his father left. He had a turbulent childhood and ran into trouble with his friends, three of whom would die of heroin overdose. His journey from obscurity to worldwide fame, dotted with successes, failures, glory and disappointments, forms the essence of this eminently readable book.

One of the few actors who have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting — he has won an Academy Award, two Tonys, and two Emmys — Pacino’s career intersects with the who’s who of Hollywood. Unsurprisingly, prominent names like Sidney Lumet and Robert de Niro, among many others, populate the pages of the book.

The memoir achieves what many other celebrity autobiographies fail to do: it chronicles Pacino’s journey as an actor and also explores his personal life in depth, which includes his relationships with Jill Clayburgh, Tuesday Weld, Beverly D’Angelo, and Diane Keaton. The reader is left with the impression that Pacino was not destined to have a permanent romantic relationship, but that thought is overshadowed by other aspects of his life.

The book’s hallmark frankness extends to his confession that he never quite understood finances, which led to serious monetary troubles. An extravagant lifestyle and a fraudulent accountant, who mismanaged his funds, reduced him to near bankruptcy.

“The kind of money I was making and where it was going was just a crazy montage of loss,” he says. “The door was wide open, and people I didn’t know were living off me.” At one point, he discovered that a landscaper was earning $400,000 for “landscaping at a house I didn’t live in.” He was forced to do “some really bad films that will go unmentioned, just for the cash, when my funds got low enough.” Having been selective throughout his career, accepting work for money rather than belief in the project wasn’t an easy decision.

Al Pacino at the Jessica Chastain Star Ceremony on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on September 4, 2025 in Los Angeles, USA. (Shutterstock)

The memoir revisits his artistic life, much of which is already in the public domain. At the same time, Pacino talks about his struggles with alcohol freely. After he realised he was out of place in Alcoholics Anonymous, he turned to therapy to kick the habit. “C’mon, buddy, you’ve got to get your head shrunk… You need to go to some guy who’s going to tell you what you already know about yourself and pay attention to you… We all need a little attention.” Coming from Pacino, that remark is ironic.

Best known for his larger-than-life performances on screen, Pacino is, at heart, passionate about the stage. Theatre does not allow retakes or edits, and the actor performs in front of an audience. The medium isn’t lucrative like cinema, but it offers the purest form of creative satisfaction, which is known to attract serious actors. Pacino is a part of that long tradition.

Sonny Boy captures his entire journey remarkably while suggesting he has more to offer to those who love his work. Towards the end of the memoir, the legend, now in his mid-eighties, lays his soul bare: “Writing this whole book, I am finding out a little more about myself. I am starting to see this person who is, in one word, anarchic.” One can sense he has reconciled with his true self, perhaps because he is older and wiser.

Biswadeep Ghosh is an independent journalist.